I've written books as acts of discovery: things I need to know and that I need to touch. And it's very dangerous work to deal with the most toxic internal elements... I feel like Madame Curie at my computer. I feel like I should be hemorrhaging from my eyes and ears.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.

I find women as writers and as characters are operating within narrow confines. They inherit a kind of ghetto of the soul. I'm trying to enlarge the spectrum.

I have a great ability to improvise verbally, and I am very funny on a dime.

One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.

Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.

The Cosby Show' - no one thought there's doctors and lawyers who are married and live in brownstones! Back then no one would have thought we would have an African-American president. They would have laughed in your face.

If we start putting music out constantly where people don't think no more, people go crazy. We're gonna lose the love of heart, of soul. And if the world lose that, I think the world is doomed.